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Bayard Rustin’s Ohio Connections

August 19, 2018

Bayard Rustin [far right] sang tenor with the Wilberforce College Quartet in 1933.

Bayard Rustin has several interesting connections to this area of Ohio.

Rustin attended Wilberforce College in Wilberforce, Ohio, from 1932-1934 on a music scholarship. He sang tenor and traveled throughout the US with the acclaimed Wilberforce Quartet;

Dr. Carl Hyde, retired physician, Quaker, age 90, resident of Friends Care Center in Yellow Springs, recounted how he, when a student at Antioch College in the late 1940s, heard about Bayard Rustin’s work at the Fellowship of Reconciliation in New York. He made a phone call and soon found himself in the city, under the tutelage of Rustin for two months for his Co-Op term;

Yellow Springs writer and director, Tony Dallas, and his sister, videographer Patti Dallas, tell how their father Meredith Dallas knew Bayard well; in fact, his name was “a household word.” Both Meredith Dallas and Rustin were pacifists and served time in prison together [1944-46] as WWII conscientious objectors, along with Larry Gara;

Dr. Larry Gara, Quaker, age 95, retired professor of American History at Wilmington College, resident of Cape May Retirement Community in Wilmington, Ohio has told many stories about Bayard over the years to local student groups. The three pacifists, Meredith Dallas, Larry Gara and Bayard Rustin fought nonviolently to desegregate the mess halls at prison (unsuccessfully). They were activists wherever they were;

Antioch College archivist, Scott Sanders, found records documenting Bayard Rustin’s speech at Antioch College in July 1947 at the 4th Annual North Central Institute of International Relations. Bayard delivered his talk entitled “How To Conquer Jim Crow” at the conference Toward World Community: Whither the United Nations? It was during this conference that Bayard first met Coretta Scott King, who was attending Antioch at the time. Coretta and Bayard got to know each other before either met Martin Luther King.

Facsimile of Rustin’s talk at Antioch College in July of 1947. [image courtesy Antiochiana, Antioch College Archives]